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Yes and the second Australia did, violent crime statistics went up. There are numerous stories of self defense cases gone right. Chicago just allowed conceal and carry licenses within the last year and a half, in that year and a half the murder rate has dropped to the lowest point since 1957 and has continued to drop. And if you want to decrease accidental death in this country, lobby for changes in Automobile penalties. That's still the number 1 killer in this country. But you'll never do that simply because it will impact YOU. You lobby for this because you are not a gun owner and do not understand the choice, so you decide that since we are nothing like you we must be unhinged and dangerous and our rights should be impinged.

Wow, nothing like using misleading statistics. Violent crime went up the first year or two in Australia, but (at least until last year, haven't checked 2013 numbers) had declined significantly. Chicago had some of the most stringent gun control laws and their murder rate dropped by half in roughly 20 years. I'm sure you knew those things and meant to post them in order to give a fair argument, but just forgot.

And if you cannot see the difference in a device intended for transportation and a device intended to hurt and kill, then I suspect you're probably not the person who should take up the flag for the pro gun cause.

No, it's fucking retarded at its face. So we find the children that need the LEAST amount of help, and give them the most help. Then we take the kids in the most trouble and flunk them out, punish them, hold them back a grade. The entire premise is idiotic. In this country we have trouble getting normal children the basic skills they need. Last I checked, our gifted students were doing ok. So lets start focusing on the kids that need it, and let the ones that gifted ones be gifted on their own.

I'm sorry, but your opinion is silly. Why are you interested in making everyone mediocre? How about we push ALL kids, not just the ones at the bottom? Whether it's publicly acceptable to say or not, the fact is most of the kids at the bottom will never advance past subpar. They'll be the manual labor, the janitors, the cooks, etc. And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that, any person providing for their family is okay in my book.

But the gifted children, they are the thinkers, they are the ones who will change the world. We need to be giving them every opportunity to succeed we can, and to hold them back simply because there are some kids who are not intelligent seems a completely backwards outlook on life. You're saying we should not provide assistance to the children who will change the world so we can instead focus on those who will work fairly unintellectual jobs. That makes no sense.

Which he can do with RonPaul.org, which has been offered to him as a free gift. This isn't about controlling his brand, this is trying to get other people's hard work for free and making a hypocrite out of himself in doing so.

I am using it. I'm renting it to a bank for a fee. I'm not going to continue your analogy. It's obviously false, and you will continue to twist it to "prove" your false assertion with an obviously false analogy.

I don't blame you for wanting to quit my analogy, when it so obviously shows your hypocrisy. It's okay for someone else to lose out on value, as long as it's not you. You can gain interest on your work, but content creators cannot on theirs. Keep trying to justify it, I actually laughed this time. The more ridiculous you become in trying to defend it, the more I laugh.

They are based in the same law. They are both IP. That your arguments fall apart when you broaden them to more types of IP doesn't mean I'm the one with the flawed arguments.

They are not the same thing. At all. I can see where you would argue that certain types of patents stifle "progress of the useful arts and sciences", but you just sound like an idiot when you say WotC not making PDFs available for sale do the same thing.

That's different than what you said before. When you put it that way, yes, I am.

I moved out of the US because it's a failure of a country, filled with contentions people like yourself that are happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater just to make sure nobody else got use from the baby or bathwater. Where I moved to, I am explicitly legally entitled to someone else's work because it's not offered. If they don't sell it here, then they *can't* have even a theoretical loss if I steal it, so there's no harm. They can sue me and win, but the maximum judgment is, by law, $0.
So, on that point, like all others you've made, you are 100% wrong. I'm sure you'll come back and tell me how it's all me wrong, but you can't argue with reality. Reality always wins.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

I literally laughed out loud. This entire conversation has been based 100% on United States concepts/law, since we're talking about a company whose headquarters are in the USA (or at the very least, a country where the same general ideas and concepts apply). I don't give a flying fuck where you are now, because it's completely irrelevant. By the way, if you really moved from the USA because of our IP laws then...well, then I guess we're both happy. You did what you felt was right and we got rid of one more stupid person.

Let me see if I can sum up your argument:

1. I want it, I should get it.
2. If it's not legal, I should get it anyways.
3. I don't mind depriving some one else the value of their work, as long as no one deprives me of mine.
4. Patents and Copyrights are the same thing.
5. If I don't get my way, I'll take my ball and go...somewhere else.

Yeah, given the sheer ridiculousness you're resorting to, I think it's safe to say it's not longer a good idea for me to continue to converse with you. I'm afraid if I talk to you much longer, I'll suffer some kind of cognitive impairment from having to slam my head into a wall. So feel free to continue saying stupid things, I may even read it and laugh at you for it, but unless you say something worthy of my response, don't plan on reading more from me.

I'm making money from all my money in bank accounts, so your analogy is false.

But you're not putting it to use. By the same token you collect interest payments (or however you're making your money), the copyright holder collects interest (as in desire) in his/her work, so if they do decide to release it later, they can make more money from it.

Use it or lose, that's what you said. If you're not spending it, you're not using it, so feel free to give it to me.

The patent chests and copyright vaults exist for the sole purpose of impeding progress of the useful arts and sciences, so any law that defends them is unconstitutional.

That is some of the most asinine logic I've ever heard. How exactly is WotC not releasing PDF files for sale before impeding progress of useful arts and sciences?

Don't confuse patents and copyrights. If I write a book or compose a song, and decide to not sell it, it's not impeding anything at all. Your logic is completely wrong.

The original term for copyright was 14 years (renewable), right? But now, we can spread content much faster than in 1787. I think that things should make it into the public domain within a generation, not in multiples thereof. 5 years with two 2 year extensions, and any trademark, copyright, or patent on something covered by any of the others cancels all other protections. You may not trademark and copyright Mickey. Pick one and stick with it, not use both and sue under the most convenient.
It's insane when a song written in 1893 is still copyrighted. My grandfather was born after that, lived 90 years, and is 20 years dead and would have had no chance to improve/alter the song because the never drew breath when it wasn't copyrighted. The point of copyright isn't to guarantee profit, but give the minimum protection necessary to encourage works to enter the public domain. But when they never do, we'd be better offf with no copyrights at all, more would enter the public domain.

Well, I'm not going to quibble over arbitrary time frames for an idea neither one of us has the power to implement. We do seem to agree on the basic idea.

At the end of the day, you're not entitled to someone else's work, legally or morally, just because you want it and it's not offered. If the content creator wishes to make it publicly available, then celebrate that person. Donate a small amount of money to that person to encourage the attitude of providing content to the public. But to argue that someone deserves to lose the right to make money off the content they create, simply because they choose not to sell it for an arbitrary amount of time, speaks to a sense of entitlement, an attitude I'd expect from a 5 year old, but not an adult.

It does to me. If I can't buy it new, then they have no losses if I "steal" it. Not even theoretical losses, as they aren't selling it. I would say that if there is a period of 1 year where the product is not available for sale, new, from the publisher, that all copyright reverts to the original author, or released to Public Domain if the original author is deceased. Use it or lose it seems reasonable to me.

Sometimes the world is better if we force, via law, what people should do without it. If you don't make it available, then you have no loss if it is pirated. If you have no theoretical loss possible, then it causes no harm, and thus should be legal.
Oh, and if the "creator" is listed as a corporation, then I'd expire all copyrights at 5 years, no matter what. They have the resources to push through a release (copyright starts at publication, as it does now), and 1 year for a very long movie run and 4 years home rental/sales is more than enough inventive to continue book and movie production.

Could you please provide me with your bank accounts? I would like to monitor the money in them. Any money you choose to not spend after one year, I will go ahead and take. After all, use it or lose it seems reasonable to you. And if you work at some kind of corporation, then I'm going to drop the time frame to six months. After all, that money came to the corporation from consumers partaking in the economy, it needs to be put back into the economy to help it grow. 6 months is plenty of time to spend that money.

My guess is your "use it or lose it" philosophy doesn't apply when it's your money, does it? It's always easier when it is someone else who has to lose out, isn't it? The problem with your theory, aside from its obvious hypocrisy, is you assume the reason the content is no longer made available for release. Actually, and this is even worse, you ignore the reason it's not available for release. For example, and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you could not figure out yourself, the laws of supply and demand are well known and if I provide content, and then withhold it, by the fact of human nature, that content will become more scarce. Once the content becomes more scarce, I can then sell the content again, for a price higher than what I could charge before. Disney does this all the time.

You're not entitled to content just because you want it. And let's face it, that's pretty much the entire crux of your argument. You want it, it doesn't hurt YOU to have it, so it's okay to pirate the content. I have no problems with reducing the length of copyright, though 5 years is entirely too little time for anyone/anything. Wasn't the last copyright length something like 25 years? I think that's a fair length. But to say something becomes public domain just because it's not offered for sale is beyond ridiculous. There are many reasons to withhold content, financial reasons or otherwise. And no one should be entitled to someone else's work simply because the creator chooses to reserve their right to sell it at a later time.

But here's a solution I think we could both get behind. After an arbitrarily set amount of time (15 years, for example), if you still wish to sell your content for commercial use, you have to renew your copyright registration. Maybe every year, every other year, I don't know, I haven't worked out the details. But anyways, this would avoid commercial products from being copyrighted in perpetuity and would automatically grant "abandonware" (or whatever you want to call it) to any content not renewed. If the copyright holder wishes to retain the ability to sell the product, then they can continue to renew the registration.

You say "sense of entitlement" as if this guy is being selfish and greedy, when all he wanted to do was read a book, and was more than happy to pay the copyright holders to do so.

because it wasn't provided he should still have it anyways

answer me this - why shouldn't he have it?

If all he wanted to do was read a book, I can suggest many books he probably has not read which are free and in the public domain. He didn't want to "read a book", he wanted to read this book, regardless of how it affected anyone else. Why shouldn't he have it? Because it's not his. Why shouldn't I get to have your direct deposit paycheck? It's every bit as nonexistent as this content, but I doubt you'd believe I deserve to have it just because I want it.

If you want to say that content creators should release their products to the public domain after they no longer sell it, feel free. I support that 100%. But if they don't want to, it's not your place to tell them how they should handle their content, or to deprive them of its value if they decide to sell it later on.

Stealing is wrong because it deprives others of something. In this case he did not deprive anyone of anything, so there was no theft. He gained information, but he didn't deprive anyone else of that information. We do have copyright law so that people will be encouraged to produce information because they can sell that information. Gaining the information without paying for it thwarts the good purpose of the copyright and is therefore wrong. But if the people owning the copyright are not selling the information, then the copyright law has already failed. What then is the harm of copying the information? Copyright law was not created for the purpose of making information secret.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't "information", this is fiction. Information would include nonfiction facts, this is complete fiction, the brainchild of some writer(s). Exactly what right does anyone have to another person's fantasy? The answer is none. The fact the creator originally made his fantasy for sale shouldn't deprive him of the right to sell it again later, and by pirating this fantasy content, it lowers the value of the content when it is decided to be sold again.

I'm not a big fan of many of the justifications for copyright infringement, but in cases of "lost" authorship or abandonware or failure to publish or deliberate removal of a product from market, the I.P. author has effectively forfeited any rights they have.

Use parts of this story as an example though. While this publisher did not make this property easily available for sale for long periods of time, they've chosen to do so now. The person who originally pirated all of the content he did is no longer looking to purchase the content he/she already owns. The copyright holder has now lost compensation for their work.

Obviously not everything is as neat and simple as my quick example, but to say a copyright holder should lose their rights simply because they do not market the product for an arbitrary length of time just doesn't make sense to me. In an ideal world, once a copyright holder has decided they no longer will make money from their content, they would release it free to the hardcore enthusiasts who would still be interested in the content. But if they choose not to, it's not okay to pirate the content simply because you think you are entitled to it.

I ended up pirating the entire catalog of D&D products because I couldn't find the AD&D 2nd Edition books for sale in either print or PDF form. So at least in my case, not printing them in the first place lead to piracy. Hopefully more companies get with the program.

Actually, it was your desire to own something which was not made available which led to piracy in the first place. Justify it how you will, but you are the one to blame for your illegal/illegitimate actions (illegitimate probably being the better word). Just because they didn't sell them, it doesn't mean you HAVE to own them.

Sure, but had they printed them or otherwise made them available he wouldn't have pirated them (assuming he is telling the truth), so it was still them not making it available that lead to his piracy. A thing can have multiple causes, you know, and WotC's stupidity is partly responsible (as, of course, is his desire for them one way or the other).

No, it was his sense of entitlement that because it wasn't provided he should still have it anyways which led to the piracy. There are many things which are not sold that I could find a pirated copy of, but still do not obtain illegitimately.

I ended up pirating the entire catalog of D&D products because I couldn't find the AD&D 2nd Edition books for sale in either print or PDF form. So at least in my case, not printing them in the first place lead to piracy. Hopefully more companies get with the program.

Actually, it was your desire to own something which was not made available which led to piracy in the first place. Justify it how you will, but you are the one to blame for your illegal/illegitimate actions (illegitimate probably being the better word). Just because they didn't sell them, it doesn't mean you HAVE to own them.